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<title>How Narrative Brought Bureaucracy To The Gods by CasGetYourShotgun</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941498">How Narrative Brought Bureaucracy To The Gods</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasGetYourShotgun/pseuds/CasGetYourShotgun'>CasGetYourShotgun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bureaucracy, Flash Fic, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gods, Origin Myths, Trickster Gods, authorial venting, not precisely original work, proper explanation in the notes, vaguely pratchettish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:34:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>348</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941498</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasGetYourShotgun/pseuds/CasGetYourShotgun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody wants to attract the attention of the God of Chaos, least of all a human with no way to fight it. Fortunately, the God of Narrative has a few tricks up their sleeve.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How Narrative Brought Bureaucracy To The Gods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, that explanation: I wrote this for a preparatory exercise before starting college last autumn and felt like turning in obvious fanfiction wouldn't be the best first impression, so I took the crossover ventfic bubbling up inside me and wrote it down with the serial numbers filed off (it was a flash fiction task, and this was the only thing in my brain). I could very easily just search and replace the names here, but honestly I rather like the effect it has as its own pseudo-origin myth so I'm leaving it as-is.</p><p>Most of the characters here were originally drawn from the Cthulhu Mythos and from Marvel's tragically underrated <i>Loki: Agent of Asgard</i>, save for one <i>Welcome to Night Vale</i> character. You get a virtual cookie if you can figure out who's who.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The God of Chaos once thought to claim a human, the one human to have caught Its attention. But the human was a writer, and as such fell under the protection of the God of Narrative - or at least, that’s what Narrative said once They became aware of the situation, since They’d always found Chaos to be deeply unpleasant and disliked the thought of the Writer suffering in a way They didn’t find narratively satisfying. “That’s just how it works,” They said to Chaos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you are bound by your domain, and cannot keep me from crafting the story of his time with me,” said Chaos, smugly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This, unfortunately, was a good point, for </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> is a story and Narrative could only go so far in choosing which could play out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are correct,” They said, “but I wasn’t finished, for you see, a writer is a dreamer, first and foremost, and so he falls under the domain of Sleep, and of Dream, to whom he is also allied via treaty.” Narrative had bent the truth here, but Chaos feared Dream as much as It could fear anything. “And furthermore, a writer must be able to create and annihilate, and edit, and so he falls under the jurisdiction of Destruction. A writer must ground their work in Logic, and so falls under the authority of Fact,” (hopefully Fact would forgive Them for dragging Her into this nonsense) “and he has a cat, which makes him one of Cat’s children – and even if you could contest your claim against all of us, you have a job. You’re a civil servant, and you are bound by your domain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was true, for Chaos carried out business for those gods who were too senile or stupid to see to their own affairs, and quite frankly It had better things to be doing than torturing a single human. It ceded the argument, and the Writer lived out his life never knowing that any of this had happened at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that is how Narrative, trickster and storyteller, brought Bureaucracy to the gods.</span>
</p>
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